


The Many and Varied Adventures of Young Fletcher Mellark

by silvercistern



Series: The Ashes of District Twelve [9]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercistern/pseuds/silvercistern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"As I drift off, I try to imagine that world, somewhere in the future, with no Games, no Capitol. A place like the meadow in the song I sang to Rue as she died. Where Peeta's child could be safe." </p><p>A series of vignettes from the youth of Katniss and Peeta's second child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

It was overwhelming to be born.

At least, an older Fletcher would have thought that, had he been old enough to understand what existence was, overwhelming and otherwise. As it was, he was two minutes old, and already, things seemed a bit too intense for his liking.

He’d been comfortable, floating just like he had always done, his life punctuated by nothing but the occasional shift or kick. The steady thump that surrounded him the only sound, most of the time, unless it was the voices. There were three of them, most of the time. One that was low, almost melodic. If he had known what a woman’s voice was, he’d have been able to identify this voice as one. That was the one that he heard most of the time. It was his favorite, especially when it sang. Then there was the laughing voice. The laughing voice was a lot deeper than his favorite and instead of calming him down, it made him excited for something he didn’t even understand. Not knowing what to do with excitement, he just kicked as hard as he could, which made his favorite voice loud. Finally, there was the squeaky voice, that he often heard right next to his face, as small points of pressure pushed into the otherwise comfortable existence.

His place of residence had been steadily shrinking, but since he didn’t exactly know what shrinking meant, all he knew was that he had been feeling an increasing sort of sensation that he would later come to know as “tightness.” The tightness grew and grew until he had really felt that something had to change. He had understood at that point, vaguely, what change was.

But only vaguely.

The change arrived, but he hadn’t liked it.  The warm, comfortable liquid he had been floating in for all of time had drained away, and the tightness had gone from somewhat constricting, to downright uncomfortable.

What had happened next wasn’t exactly something he’d want to recall, which was convenient, because he wouldn’t. But now that that horror was over, there was nothing but stimuli, coming at him from every direction. The dusky dark was replaced with an almost blinding light.

And there was air.

Breathing was new. He didn’t like it at first, not at all, but found there was a new way to show his dislike, by breathing very aggressively. It made a noise, and it took a bit of time for him to realize that the noise was a voice, and it was his.

Shapes moved , sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Some of them didn’t move at all. He found it all very confusing, so he tried to keep his eyes closed.

The voices sounded different, and he realized that they belonged to the shapes, somehow. He disapproved of this situation, and vocalized this disapproval, but it didn’t seem to stop. There was one shape, in particular, very dark on top and light underneath, that seemed to bounce incessantly. It had the squeaky voice, and he wanted it to go away.

But the laughing voice and his favorite voice seemed to be one shape. Instead of floating in liquid, they somehow held him close, and he moved from one to the other. He didn’t know if he liked being held, the voices seemed to know what they were doing. His favorite voice had positioned him a certain way, and suddenly something new was happening with his mouth. It wasn’t breathing, which was good, because he liked whatever it was a whole lot more. It made him feel full and warm and happy.

Suspended between their arms, he quickly fell asleep.

But just as his consciousness fluttered away, there was one more sensation that he did not recognize.

He felt loved. 


	2. In Which Fletcher Chokes on a Cupcake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One: Crawl

Daddy was making the sweet things again.

Fletcher was thrilled, so he threw his head back and giggled, his deep baby laugh ringing through the place that wasn’t Home, but it was still inside so it had to be Bakery and not Woods.

He liked Bakery. Whenever he was there, it was only him and Daddy. While he was strapped to Daddy’s stomach, Fletcher would watch while Daddy put his hands in lots of messy, sticky, tasty things. He always gave him a taste, and the tastes _always_ tasted good. Fletcher didn’t understand why Mama insisted on feeding him green, goopy mashed peas, instead of the sweet sticky substances that Bakery was full of.

But Mama had Woods, and that was another thing altogether. Woods was probably the best place for looking and listening. Mama was quiet, and so he was quiet too. Sometimes he just slept, but it was a good place for sleeping, where he could hear the soothing thumps of her heart and feel the cool breeze on his face.

Bakery, though, was the best place for eating. And he could never sleep in Bakery, because Daddy _loved_ to talk.

He told him stories that Fletcher didn’t really understand, about Brothers and Being Little. It didn’t make sense, because Daddy was big sized.

“So whatdya think, little man?” he’d ask, stirring the sweet with his strong arm. Fletcher would try to tell him that he was ready for a taste, but his words didn’t work right, so all that came out were garbled sounds. But Daddy would nod, as though he understood, and then he’d say, “You think you’d like this place to be yours some day? I’d say you’d have to share with your sister, but, between you and me, she likes to sleep in too much. You and me, though, up with the sun.”

That didn’t make any sense at all to Fletcher, so he’d ask for a taste again.

Today, though, Daddy was focusing very hard on an entire tray of sweet things sitting in front of them. They were the perfect size for Fletcher’s mouth, but they looked tiny and awkward in Daddy’s large hands. He made things like this a lot, but they were usually bigger, all sweet and spongy on the bottom and sweet and gooey on the top. It was confusing, though, because he was painting little things on them that Fletcher saw in Woods all the time. They were little suns, with bright colors around them. In Woods, he tried to grab them and eat them, but Mama never let him.

But Bakery was the best place for eating.

His Daddy was humming to himself, standing up straight and holding one of the sweet things close to his face. In this position, Fletcher was close enough to reach out and grab one of the others that were sitting on the counter. He had been practicing his reaching and grabbing for a while, but like his voice, his hands didn’t always do what he told them.

Mouth wide open in concentration, he reached. Surprisingly, his small fingers grazed against one of the sweet things, then he _grabbed_.

And it worked!

He let out a deep squeal of excitement, and Daddy, still distracted by what he was working on, let out a low chuckle that rumbled through Fletcher’s whole body.

Mama usually fed him, whether it was mushy peas or milk. Sometimes Daddy did too, but he didn’t have milk for some reason, so it was sweet things, or mushed up pieces of his dinner. Whenever it wasn’t sweet, Fletcher would yell, telling him he’d rather go to Bakery and eat, but Daddy didn’t understand him quite yet. Hope even tried to feed him sometimes, but Hope was less good at giving him food, and more good at making funny faces.

Regardless, Fletcher had never fed himself. He put things in his mouth all the time, but only because it seemed a good way to figure out what things were. Now, though, he was about to try.

In one swift moment, he mashed the entire sweet thing into his mouth. It fit, but just barely, and he closed his mouth as the rush of gooey, spongy sweetness exploded over his tongue. He was so proud and happy, that he giggled and squealed.

Only… suddenly he was coughing. And then he couldn’t make any noise at all. Or breathe even. He began to thrash in panic.

But Daddy was already unhooking him from his stomach, and spinning him around. With a swipe, he pushed the entire tray of sweet things away so that it clattered loudly on the floor, then he lay Fletcher on his back on the counter, and pulled the mushy remnants of what the six-month-old had eaten out of his mouth.

Fletcher was scared. And he still couldn’t breathe.

With a look in his eyes that Fletcher had never seen before, Daddy crouched down, and then flipped him over onto his knee, thumping Fletchers back so hard that it hurt a little.

But he coughed, and the rest of the sweet thing shot out of his mouth and splattered on the floor.

Terrified and a little sore, Fletcher began to cry as Daddy picked him up under his arms and held him at face level. His eyes were wide and tears were streaming down his face too as he stared at him, taking deep shuddering breaths.

Then he was crushed in a hug so tight that it was hard to breathe.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again, son!” Daddy said in a quavering sort of voice.  His whole body was shaking hard, and it made Fletcher even more scared than he had been before.

He buried his face in the safety of Daddy’s shoulder and wailed. 

"It's okay, little man," Daddy croaked, patting his back.

"It's okay."


	3. In Which Fletcher has his First Birthday

“Wow, Daddy,” Fletcher heard his sister gasp. “The cake is so pretty!”

For some reason, as soon as he woke up, Mama, Daddy, and even Hope, had been happy to do whatever it was that he wanted. And since Fletcher mostly wanted to eat, today had been a very good day for eating.

Breakfast was his favorite, little pieces of bacon and scrambled eggs that he could throw, if he wanted. Daddy didn’t even scold when he threw, he just laughed and held Mama’s hand. For lunch, he’d been allowed to sit in Mama’s lap and eat off of her plate, so he had thrown her fork again and again, laughing when it stuck, quivering in the wall. And for dinner, he had eaten nothing but cheese buns. Not once did Daddy try to force him to eat his peas, and Haymitch had even given him a tiny little sip of his juice when no one was looking. Fletcher spit it out and made a face, and Haymitch had laughed and laughed, until Fletcher laughed too.

All in all, a good day for eating but now it looked to get even better.

“Ake!” he called out excitedly, kicking his feet against the supports of his high chair that was positioned at the head of the table.

“Calm down, birthday boy,” Daddy chuckled from his position behind the counter. The cake, wherever it was, was hidden from sight, but if Hope said it was there, it definitely was.

Fletcher kicked harder, even more excited that Daddy could finally understand what he was saying. He had no idea what “birthday” was, but they’d been saying it all day, and the day had been nothing but food and games and Mama and Daddy and Hope paying him tons of attention, so he figured that “birthday” meant they had given up on all of their other responsibilities to settle into the real business of focusing on him all the time, like they were supposed to.

Mama was sitting next to him at the table, and she was smiling quietly, but she looked just a little bit sad. He hoped she wouldn’t be sad for long, because it was Birthday.

“Mama!” he yelled, throwing a slivered section of sweet potato at her head in an attempt to cheer her up When she burst into laughter, he giggled too, happy he had done his job. Haymitch guffawed so hard and long that the walls shook, then he told him “Well done, junior.”

“Is it ready? Is it ready? Is it ready?” Hope asked, jumping up and down next to Daddy. Daddy put his hand on her head to hold her steady, but she still tried to jump, making grunting noises that Fletcher thought were hilarious.

“Almost, nutmeg,” Daddy said. “Can you turn out the lights for me, please?” he added.

Hope scampered across the kitchen floor, there was a click, and then everything was dark, except for a single, tiny light that was coming closer and closer as Mama, Daddy, and Hope’s voices rang out in song. Haymitch even seemed to be humming a little.

Fletcher was very excited because cake was coming, he just knew it, but he decided since they were singing, he’d sing too, even though he didn’t know the words or the melody, and kept singing long after the short song was finished.

“Okay, little man, time to blow out your candle!” Daddy grinned when Fletcher finally fell quiet.

With a laugh, Mama said, “Peeta, I don’t think he knows how.”

“Oooh ooh lemme show him!” Hope jumped up and down, only a little visible in the light from the tiny candle sticking into a cake that Fletcher could barely see.

Haymitch laughed again, “I don’t think the boy cares about the candle, firefly. He just wants to eat.”

As he strained to reach the cake in front of him, Fletcher tried to tell Haymitch that he was right, but his mouth didn't work right again, so he just groaned instead.

“Can I just do it, Mama?” Hope begged, jumping again.

“Sure, little goose. Go ahead.”

With a little puff of air, the candle went out, and everything was completely dark again. Mama stood up and quietly made her way through the dark to turn the lights back on.

But Fletcher knew where the cake was. He reached and reached, until he could wrap his hand around it, then he pulled it onto his tray. He didn’t need to see it to eat it, so he did - bite after delicious bite. 

He’d just shoved the third handful into his mouth, when the lights came back on.

“So whatdya think of thaa…?” Daddy began, before he trailed off.

“Ake!” Fletcher mumbled happily through a mouthful sweet deliciousness.

Haymitch laughed so hard he fell off his chair.

“Are you drunk?” Mama demanded.

“Drunk!” Fletcher mumbled again, glad that Haymitch was having such a good time. Maybe “birthday” meant a day where they pay attention to him, too.

Pulling himself back up to the table, Haymitch shook his head. “This is just damn near hysterical, sweetheart.”

Trying to comfort Daddy, who seemed suddenly sad, Hope said, “Well, the little cake _was_ really pretty, Daddy.”

Mama chuckled and told Daddy, “Peeta, he’s one. He’d be happy no matter what it looked like.”

With a sheepish grin, Daddy said, “Oh, I know… I just worked all day on it yesterday, and I hoped he’d be excited to have a cake with his favorite thing on it.”

“Well, I was ‘cited, Daddy,” Hope interjected.

Fletcher paused from his eating and looked up. “Ake!” he called out clearly, reminding them all what was happening.

“If you had waited just a minute, you would have seen all the pinecones, Fletcher,” Daddy shook his head.

With the next handful of cake hovering near his mouth, Fletcher paused. “Cones?” he asked.

“Yeah Fletcher!” Hope said in a whiny voice. “There were pinecones all over, like you like to throw. And it was so pretty, but you didn’t even _see_.”

He paused for another moment then held up his hand, opening it so they could all see.

“Ake!” he shouted.

“Maybe next year, Peeta,” Mama said, trying not to laugh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt was "Peeta is irrationally upset when Fletcher does not appreciate the skill that went into decorating his first birthday cake."


	4. In Which Fletcher is Potty Trained

“Fletcher, you need to sit still,” Mama sighed, trying to force him to stay seated on the cold booster seat on top of the potty.

He didn’t quite understand why all of this was necessary. On the bathroom floor was a perfectly functional diaper that could go with him anywhere, unlike this potty, which was stuck in the bathroom. He didn’t know what Mama did in the woods when she had to go, but there definitely weren’t any potties out there. Fletcher figured she wore a diaper too.

So why did _he_ have to stop?

Today was Daddy’s day at work. He didn’t make Fletcher use the potty. He said that Fletcher would when he was good and ready, and he wasn’t about to force him.

But Mama did not agree.

Hope was at school, so he and Mama had been in the bathroom all morning, waiting for him to go. He kinda had to go at this point, but it felt weird, sitting up there like he was. He just wanted to spend some quiet time in the corner with his diaper. Was that so much to ask? Mama couldn’t enjoy sitting in the bathroom this much. She got antsy when they sat at the dinner table for too long, so this had to be even worse.

“Fletcher, I promise you, you’ll like this better. Aren’t you sick of wearing those stinky diapers?”

“No,” he said.

“Don’t you want to use the potty like a big kid?” she asked, looking a little more annoyed. She had never rebraided her hair this morning, so her old braid was halfway unraveled, and her hair was all over the place. Fletcher was still in his teddy bear pajamas, and she was still wearing her pajamas too.

“No,” Fletcher said.

Biting her lip with increasing irritation, she said, “Only big kids can have bows of their own, and set snares and things. Don’t you want to do that?”

“No,” he said, even though he did.

Mama crossed her arms and set her jaw.

“Is that the way you’re going to be?”

“No,” he said.

Letting out an aggravated sigh, she stood up from her kneeling position, crossed her legs, and then sat down.

“We are not leaving this bathroom until you go, Fletcher. I can promise you, I am much better at waiting than you are.”

\--- 

“Hello? Anybody home?” Daddy’s voice called out.

Mama sat up suddenly from her curled up position on the floor and called out, “We’re up here!” in a ragged voice.

Fletcher kicked his legs as he sat on the potty.

The stairs rumbled as Daddy ran up them. He was so loud when he walked, and Fletcher knew it got on Mama’s nerves, because she groaned. Fletcher, on the other hand, thought it was funny, so he chuckled happily to himself, kicking out his legs even harder, so that when his feet hit the bowl of the potty, they made echoing noises.

The door swung open while Daddy was saying, “I’m sorry I’m home so late for lunch. You two must have eaten without me. Did you make a mess again, little ma–“

“Hi Daddy!” Fletcher said brightly.

Daddy smirked before he leaned forward and kissed Fletcher on the forehead, “Well hello there, little man. What’s going on here?”

“I won’t go potty,” he said simply.

Mama groaned and slumped back down onto her side.

“Oh really?” Daddy asked him, even though he was looking at Mama.

Fletcher nodded and kicked his feet. His tummy rumbled, and he looked up at Daddy hopefully.

“How long have you been in here, exactly?” Daddy crouched down and asked Mama.

Instead of answering, Mama just groaned.

Daddy pulled Fletcher off the potty and lay him on his back, pinning his diaper back on with a quick, practiced motion. As he did so, he turned his head and looked at Mama.

“Don’t even say it,” she muttered.

Peeta turned back to Fletcher, “I just think that he’s too young to learn. Boys have different hardware than girls. Just because Hope basically potty trained herself doesn’t mean Fletcher is going to be some sort of toilet-using prodigy. He’s got more he needs to learn than she did. Isn’t that right, son? Aiming is an important life skill.”

Fletcher had no real idea what Daddy was talking about, but he was using the voice he used when he told jokes, so he laughed.

“I told you not to say it,” Mama scowled, and her tummy rumbled too.

Daddy laughed.

“Alright. Let’s get you two some breakfast. Or lunch, or whatever it is you call it when a mother and child don’t eat because they’re both the most stubborn individuals in existence.” Standing up, he tossed Fletcher up into the air, then caught him. “You’ll learn when you’re good and ready, won’t you Fletcher?” he asked with a smile.

“No,” Fletcher said. 


	5. In Which Fletcher Learns to Bake

“Are you ready for this, little man?” Daddy asked as he and Fletcher walked towards the bakery through the deep winter snow. Well, actually, Daddy was walking. Fletcher was sitting on his shoulders, trying to catch snowflakes as they fell.

“I wanna bake!” he clapped his mittened hands together, trying to catch a particularly large flake between them, but when he pulled them apart, there was nothing there.

“Do you remember the rules?” Daddy asked as they reached the top of the bakery steps. He grabbed Fletcher around the waist and swung him down to the ground.

Fletcher nodded proudly. He and Daddy went over the bakery rules every night before bed.

“Let’s say them together, then,” Daddy said as he fiddled with his keys. “No…” he began.

“No ovens!” Fletcher shouted.

Putting his key in the door and turning it, Daddy smiled, “Good job. Next one now! No…”

“No knives!” Fletcher jumped up and down.

Daddy pulled the door open and ushered him inside. “You’re gonna be taking over for me in no time, Fletcher. What’s the last one? No…”

Fletcher stopped in the middle of the storefront floor and sighed glumly, “No tastes.”

Crouching down, Daddy helped him out of his mittens, hat, scarf, and coat. “I might as well retire right now. You’re ready to be the greatest baker Panem has ever seen,” he winked and then stood back up, taking off his own coat. “Now, what should we make?”

Without asking, Fletcher ran past the counter and into the kitchen, calling out, “Cookies!” as he ran.

\--- 

Daddy perched him on the counter in between a rack of spices and the mixer as he brought over all the ingredients and sat them down one by one, explaining what they were and what they did. It was difficult to pay attention, but Fletcher tried really hard, because Daddy seemed so excited and serious all at the same time.

He measured out each ingredient, and let Fletcher pour each one in to the mixer. Daddy didn’t even yell when he accidentally poured the one called vanilla all over himself.

Even though he was having fun, it was a little boring when Daddy did all the mixing. Normally, this was the best part, because you could have tastes, but Daddy said that there were no tastes at the bakery from now on – that was only for home. So as the beaters mixed everything together into a thick batter, Fletcher played with one of the spices from the rack behind him. It was bright red, his favorite color.

He wondered what it tasted like. Red was the color of strawberries and apples and lots of other delicious things, so this had to be the most delicious spice of all.

Since it wasn’t part of the batter, he didn’t think Daddy would mind if he took just a little taste. Grasping the jar tightly, he used all of his strength to unscrew the lid.

But he twisted too hard, and the lid came flying open, sending the spice flying into his face, into the air, and, worst of all, into the cookie batter.

And it _hurt._

The spice wasn’t delicious at all. It burned his eyes and made him sneeze. When it touched his tongue, it burned and made him want a drink very, very badly. A whole lot of it must have gone into Daddy’s nose, because he sneezed for a very, very long time.

Fletcher felt awful.

His first official day working at the bakery, and he had ruined it. Daddy was never going to let him come again, and since Hope didn’t want to be a baker, he was going to have to give the bakery away. Though he wanted to try to be as grown up as he could, Fletcher couldn’t fight the tears that started filling his eyes. He sniffled once, twice, and then started crying in earnest.

Daddy pulled him off of the counter and into a big hug, “Don’t cry, Fletcher. It’s all right. Everything is okay.”

“I-I-I mess it up!” Fletcher said in a small voice.

Instead of nodding, Daddy shook his head and turned on the mixer again, blending the horrid red spice into the chocolate cookie batter.

“There’s something you should know about baking, little man,” he began as he sat Fletcher back on the counter. “About life in general, really, but you’re four, so let’s stick to baking, okay?”

Fletcher nodded, trying to sniff back his tears.

“Sometimes, the bad things that happen, make things better in the end.”

That didn’t make sense, “But, it’s yucky, though.”

Daddy smiled and stopped the mixer, “Let’s wait until they’re finished, and then we’ll decide, okay little man?”

“Otay,” Fletcher said.

 

“Mama! Mama! Mama!” Fletcher called, running into the house, and waving a chocolate cookie in the air. “I ‘vented it! I ‘vented a cookie!”

Mama was at the kitchen table doing something called “tanning.” Fletcher didn’t quiet understand what that was, but he knew it made everything stink, and it was one of the few things that made Daddy mad. But right now, Daddy seemed too happy to be upset about “tanning,” which made Fletcher even happier.

“What?” she asked, with a little smile, Fletcher’s favorite one, the secret special one that she didn’t have very much.

“I ‘vented a cookie!” he said again, gasping for breath and holding the baked item out to her.

There was the sound of a door closing, and then Daddy followed him into the house. “Wow son, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you run that fast.”

“Wanted to show Mama!” Fletcher beamed with excitement, watching as she bit into the cookie.

She began to chew, then her head jerked back in shock.

Daddy grinned.

“Wow, little squirrel,” she said while she chewed, “these are _surprisingly_ spicy. They’re really good, but I just didn’t expect…”

“Did he tell you he invented them himself?” Daddy asked.

Mama smiled and nodded, and then Daddy picked him up and spun them around.

“I think we have a name for them, little man. Fletcher’s Surprisingly Spicy Cookies. What do you think?”

“Let’s make more,” Fletcher said. 


	6. In Which Fletcher Does a Bad Thing

The first thing Fletcher learned about geese was that they had teeth. The second thing he learned about them was it hurt when they bit him. As a result, Fletcher _hated_ geese.

But the geese belonged to Haymitch and Hope, and so there was no escaping them, even if they made it scary to go outside.

He didn’t understand it. Animals were for eating. They’d had goose for supper plenty of times, and it tasted really good. So did chicken, and turkey, and venison and everything else. The geese didn’t keep mice away like their cat, or chase raccoons, like Mister Thom’s dogs. The geese just snapped and hissed and made the ground all messy.

Geese were bad news.

But Fletcher had a plan.

Tomorrow was his first archery lesson.

 ---

“Okay, you’re doing good,” Mama said, “but when you pull back, you need to pull all the way to your cheek, like you’re squishing your nose.”

Biting his lip in concentration, Fletcher pulled even harder on the string of the tiny bow his mother had made for him. Little beads of sweat gathered on his brow

“Very good,” she smiled. “Now aim just like I showed you, and when you’re ready, let go.”

The arrow flew from the bow and missed the target completely, flying into the woods instead.

Fletcher looked at the ground, feeling a little embarrassed, but Mama put her finger on his chin and lifted it up so that he was looking into her gray eyes.

“You did very well,” she said evenly. “Once you get your form down, aiming is the easy part. And I _know_ you have good aim.”

Her confidence in him made him feel a lot better. Even though he knew she loved him, Mama was never as free with her compliments as Daddy was. When she said something nice, Fletcher _knew_ he had to be doing something pretty special.

By the end of the lesson, he was hitting the target, though not even close to the middle. That didn’t bother him too much, though, because Mama seemed extremely pleased with his progress.

“Now remember,” she said as they went back into the house and she sat his little bow on the floor next to Hope’s medium-sized one, and her big one. “Do not touch this bow unless you are with me or Daddy. And never, ever point it at a person.”

“Daddy knows how to shoot?” Fletcher asked, surprised.

Mama looked sad all of a sudden.

“He does,” she finally said. “He just doesn’t like to.”

\--- 

For the next few weeks, Fletcher practiced every day with Mama. Hope usually helped too, even though she never ever went hunting anymore. Hope didn’t like to see the dead animals that Mama brought home either. Instead, when the two of them went into the woods together they gathered plants and things.

Fletcher thought that was boring, and he was certain that when he could shoot as well as Hope could, he’d go into the woods with Mama every day.

“Not when you have to go to school,” Hope would insist. “You _have_ to go to school.”

He argued that no he did not, and then the two of them would end up yelling at each other at the top of their lungs.

It always made Mama very, very angry when they fought. Sometimes it made her so angry she would cry. If Daddy was at the Bakery, Haymitch would have to come over while she spent time in her room. Fletcher tried not to fight with his sister, but it was hard.

When he could hit the middle circle of the target every other time, Fletcher decided he was ready. Maybe he would have waited a little longer, but just that afternoon, one of Haymitch’s geese had bit his calf so hard he had a bruise. He was going to start school in a few weeks – what would the other kids think if they found out he was getting beaten up by a bunch of silly birds?

It was Sunday, the only day Mama and Daddy slept in, when he crept out of his bed and got dressed. He still didn’t know how to tie his shoes, so instead of wearing his boots, he had to wear slippers with the dark brown hunting pants that Hazelle had made special for him. But that was okay, because his slippers were very quiet, and allowed him to sneak down the stairs and out the back door, his bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.

He had hoped that the geese would be sleeping when he came out, but they weren’t. Maybe geese were so bad that they never even slept. It wouldn’t surprise him.

Checking to make certain there were no people around, both so he was at least following one of Mama’s rules, as well as so no one saw him, he crept across the yard, setting up on the side of the shed. The geese were used to him shooting his bow, so they weren’t even scared, they just made goosey noises to themselves while he nocked an arrow and pulled back the string.

He meant to scare them. That was all. Shoot a few arrows at them so they knew that he was tough and they left him alone. But at the same instant that he let his arrow fly, one of them unfurled its wing right in the way.

The noise it made when the arrow buried itself in the far tip of its wing was horrible, and so, so loud. It sounded like a person, and Fletcher felt like he was going to throw up, even though he hadn’t had even had breakfast yet.

Less than a minute later, Haymitch ran out of his front door, and Fletcher could hear Hope running down the stairs, followed by Mama and Daddy. They thought a fox was getting the geese, probably. It happened sometimes, and Hope always cried.

There was no time to even hide.

“I wanted to scare them!” he cried frantically. 

As soon as Haymitch heard him he laughed, picking up the terrified goose and snapping the arrow in half before he pulled it out.

But Hope was wailing. “How _could_ you, Fletcher? How could you shoot at my geese?”

“I… I _didn’t_ though. It just…”

But he never had time to finish his statement, because his mother grasped his arm and pulled him after her, into the house.

He didn’t even have a chance to let go of his bow.

\--- 

Daddy was angry.

So, so angry.

“ _This_ ,” he waved Fletcher’s little bow in the air before tossing it onto the table, “this is not a toy.”

Fletcher looked at Mama, hoping she would calm Daddy down, but her eyes were cold and hard.

“I am very disappointed in you, Fletcher.”

“I jus’ wanted to scare them,” he said in a small voice.

Hope was still crying, and at his words, she cried even louder.

“You could have killed one of your sister’s pets,” Mama said firmly. “And what’s more, you disobeyed one of the rules. Rules we have for a very important reason.”

Daddy held onto the back of a chair, squeezing his fingers and closing his eyes tight before he reached out, grabbed Fletcher’s bow, and broke it in half with one hand.

Instantly, Mama was at his side, acting as though Fletcher and Hope weren’t even there.

“Peeta?” she asked softly. “Are you still with us?”

Daddy let out a deep sigh, “Yeah. I’m okay. Just…”

Mama nodded, then turned back to Fletcher. “I thought you were responsible enough to have your own bow, but you’re not. You can have another one in the time it takes me to make it.”

Fletcher hung his head. It had gone from summer to winter before she had finished the bow that Hope was using now. But there was no point in arguing. He’d done this to himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to hold back his tears.

“We understand that you’re sorry,” Daddy finally said, his voice gravely, “but that doesn’t make what you did okay.”

It was too much. He felt too guilty. Refusing to look in Daddy’s eyes, he ran up the stairs.

 ---

“Fletcher?” a soft voice called through the door, before it opened, revealing Mama on the other side.

“I’m really, really sorry,” he wept into his pillow, unable to look at her for longer than a second. He didn’t even realize she had crossed the room, until his bed sank down as she sat next to him and silently stroked his back with gentle hands.

“I-I-I m-m-made Hope so s-s-sad!” he stuttered.

There was a long pause, before Mama said, “You did. But she’ll forgive you. Your sister loves you, little squirrel.”

Fletcher tried to stop crying, but only found himself crying harder than before.

Mama reached under his shoulders and lifted him up, pulling him onto her lap and cradling him like he was a baby. As she lifted him up, he saw Daddy’s silhouette in the doorframe.

“Sometimes we hurt the people we love, Fletcher. But I promise you, the people who really love you will always forgive you.”

“Always,” Daddy echoed.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a combination of the prompts: "First encounter with rabid geese" and "Fletchers first archery lesson."


	7. In Which Fletcher Attends his First Day of School

The little girl was crying in the corner when Fletcher found her.

She didn’t look like anybody else in his class. Her skin was a lot darker, and her hair was a _lot_ curlier. He hadn’t ever seen her before, and he knew almost all of the other kids in his class already.

He didn’t know what to do.

It was the first day of school and he thought it was probably normal for kids to feel a little worried and scared. When Daddy and Mama had dropped him of, he had asked worriedly if they thought kids were going to like him.

Daddy had crouched down with a very serious look in his eyes and told  him that the first time he had seen Mama was on _their_ first day of school.

“She was wearing a plaid red dress, and her hair was in two long braids,” he had said, while Mama rolled her eyes.

“You don’t have to meet the girl you’re going to marry, Fletcher. Just be friendly. You’ll make friends. I don’t think there’s a kid around who wouldn’t like you.”

Something about what Mama had said had made Daddy laugh a lot.

So now here he was, feeling awful because this little girl was crying. He didn’t know why she was sad. He’d spent the entire morning playing with his new friend, Gideon, but he hadn’t seen her playing at all. She just stayed by herself.

Maybe she was lonely.

Without really deciding to, he found himself walking over to the secluded corner of the playground where she was hiding.

“Hi,” he said with a bright smile. “I’m Fletcher.”

The girl had looked up at him, opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought the better of it and closed her lips tight.

But that wasn’t before Fletcher had seen that she was missing her front tooth.

“You lost a tooth already?” he said, eyes lighting up. “Wow! What was it like?”

She shrugged. “It hurt a little,” she said with a sniffle.

“What’s wrong?” Fletcher asked, sitting down next to her. “Why are you sad?”

The girl’s eyebrow’s furrowed, and she almost looked angry, but Fletcher wasn’t looking at her face, instead he was staring off at the woods.

“When I get sad, my mama sings a song to me. Do you like to sing?”

The girl looked confused.

“Here, I’ll sing it now, and maybe you’ll feel better…”

\--- 

“So I sang her the song Mama sings when I can’t sleep,” Fletcher finished his story, looking up at his family as they ate dinner.

Mama’s fork fell onto her plate with a clang.

“Oh you did, did you?” Daddy asked.

Fletcher nodded and continued eating his venison. “Her name is Daisy. She’s new, and she didn’t have any friends. I still don’t know why she was crying, though. But after I was done singing, Gideon wanted to play, so I told her she should come.”

“Did she play with you?” Mama asked, giving Daddy a stern look.

Fletcher bit his lip and looked confused, “No… she went and hid. Later on I heard her yelling at some kids.”

Mama looked smug, but Daddy said, “It was very kind of you to sing to her, Fletcher.”

He shrugged, “I like to sing. And she was missing a tooth already! It was really neat. When will I start losing teeth?”

“Can we stop talking about teeth already and pass me the butter?” Haymitch yelled from the end of the table.

It was then that something happened that none of them expected.

Without even looking, Mama picked up the butter and threw it in Haymitch’s face.

"Use that," she said calmly as the stick slid down the man's face and fell into his mashed potatoes and gravy with a _plop_. "We don't waste food around here." 

Fletcher laughed so hard, he peed his pants. 


	8. Gideon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part Two: Walk

“Hey Fletcher!” a boy’s voice rang out across the Meadow. The owner of the voice was running towards the single tree that had escaped the bounds of the Fence and grew, tall and strong, where the kids could get to it. As he ran, his straight black hair bounced, as though it were trying to demonstrate just how perfect hair could be. Decently tall and muscular for his age (which was nine), he looked like a boy on a mission. Which he was.

“Where are you?” he called out again. “Last stickball game of the summer’s about to start, and Daisy said she’s going to rearrange your face if you aren’t on the mound in two minutes!”

Skidding to a stop under the tree, the boy dragged the back of his hand across his forehead and took a deep, gasping breath.

“Well, actually,” he began again after a moment’s consideration, “since it took me two minutes to run here, she’s probably gonna rearrange your face no matter what.”

There was the tiniest rustle, and then another boy dropped to the ground next to him. He landed in a crouch, and then quickly stood up, tossing back his head so that the mop of blond hair that could only be characterized as “wild” wasn’t obscuring his vision. He was shorter than the other boy, but even though he was fair-haired to the point of sporting almost invisible eyebrows, his skin was almost as dark as his companion’s.

Grinning, he held out a ragged-looking arrow, looking incredibly proud of himself.

“I dunno, Gideon. A crooked face might be worth it.”

 ---

“So, you’re telling me that you think your _grandfather_ shot that arrow into that tree?” Gideon asked, his grey eyes cool with disbelief as the two best friends slowly walked home from their belated stickball game. Their team had won, but unless they were playing the older kids, they always won. Fletcher had the best aim of pretty much any kid in District Twelve, and that put anyone else at a distinct disadvantage.

Daisy’s threats had puttered into nothing in the wake of their win, though she had shoved the boy and told him not to be late next time, if he knew what was good for him.

“Yeah!” the boy in question nodded enthusiastically. “Only, I mean the outlaw hunter one… not the baker one that got blown up. Although… if it _were_ him, that would explain why the arrow’s still in the tree. And actually, they _both_ got blown up so…”

Gideon raised his eyebrow. Fletcher occasionally had a tendency to ramble.

“I can’t wait to show this to my grandma,” Fletcher continued as he pulled the arrow from his back pocket where it had been stuck, quivering like a flag, for the entirety of their game. “She’s gonna be so excited – it’s like a… a… a _mystery_ or something. I wonder what he was aiming at? I wonder why he missed? It’s a piece of history!”

“Well, a mystery that’s never gonna be solved,” his friend tossed a ball into the air and caught it as they walked, “…unless you build a time machine. Or maybe you could get that guy Alder to do it. He is so _weird._ ”

“He’s not that bad, Gideon. The other day he showed me what stuff at the bakery I could mix together to make an explosion.”

“Really?” the taller boy grinned. “Maybe I was wrong about him.”

Though he kept his eyes on the road ahead, Fletcher smiled slyly, before breaking into a run.

“Well, that’s good,” he called over his shoulder, “because we have to go see him.”

“You have _got_ to be joking.”

 ---

“Fletcher, do I _look_ like I am the sort of individual who spends my afternoons participating in impossible wild goose chases with children?” Alder said as he poured a yellow powder into a beaker full of viscous purple goo. As the two agents touched, the resulting mélange solidified, turned green, and then broke into fragmented crystals.

Gideon’s face rested on the counter, and his eyes grew wide as saucers.

“Whoa.”

Although the boy might complain about having to pay a visit to Alder Hawthorne, one of the most mercurial individuals to ever move to District 12, the fact was that Gideon loved coming to the medicine factory’s research lab, where Alder worked for his uncle, Vick trying to invent new and better medicines.

Despite his personality being rather… difficult, Fletcher really liked Alder, though at this moment, he had no idea how to deal with him. The fact was, Fletcher liked pretty much everyone, even Daisy, who yelled at him on a regular basis. Granted, he’d like her a lot better if she wasn’t threatening him all the time, and maybe she wasn’t really his favorite person around but still, there really wasn’t any reason to actively hate anyone who didn’t kill people.

And even then, sometimes… well, it just wasn’t fair of him to judge.

But serious concerns aside, he tried to think of what his father, or, much as he hated to admit it, his sister would do in his current situation with Alder. They were both very good at convincing people to do what they wanted. But they were also good at making things up, and Fletcher was quite possibly the worst liar in the world.

So he decided to use the only two things he had in his arsenal:  honesty and a positive attitude.

“Well, it sounds like lots of fun, so yes, I think you look like that sort of… um… guy.” Since Alder was the moodiest adult Fletcher had ever met, this statement required a _huge_ amount of positive attitude.

The man stood to his full height (which was very, _very_ tall) and ran his hand through his mass of curly hair. Heaving an annoyed sigh, he reached onto the counter and picked up the arrow, twirling it in front of his face with his long fingers.

“It is almost utterly impossible to accurately guess the original trajectory of an arrow that was shot into a tree, at the most recent, thirty- three years ago,” he said, almost to himself. “That is, if your hypothesis that this arrow is from your grandfather’s generation is even accurate.”

“But I know what my mom’s arrows look like,” Fletcher protested. “This isn’t like that! It’s coated in some kind of stuff I’ve never seen before.”

“Pitch,” Alder sniffed, slapping Gideon’s hands away from the beaker of green crystal. “Feel free to ingest that,” he addressed the boy with a sneer. “You’ll only be plagued with terrifying hallucinations for the next thirty six hours.”

 Gideon pulled a face as soon as Alder turned his back, “I don’t wanna eat it. I just wanna look at it. And maybe smell it.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that, either,” the man said over his shoulder.

Sliding off of the counter, Fletcher followed the man as he marched through the lab, coat billowing behind him.

“What’s pitch do?” the boy asked as he tried to keep up, dodging the streaming white fabric. “Mom doesn’t put it on any of the shafts she makes.”

Sitting the arrow down on another counter, Alder picked up a rather large scalpel from a side table, and held it up to his eyes, before making a lightning-quick slice across the arrow, splitting it completely in half.

Fletcher’s mouth hung open in shock.

“Pitch is a resin designed to waterproof things,” the man said casually, squinting his catlike eyes as he cleaned off the edge of the scalpel with a cloth.

In an instant, Gideon was stomping across the room, shouting so loudly that Daisy Thatcher herself would have stepped back, impressed by the effort.

“YOU BIG JERK! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” he bellowed, barreling towards Alder, who calmly held the scalpel in one hand. Rolling his eyes, the man put his long, slender hand on Gideon’s forehead, effectively preventing him from moving any closer, though the boy continued to try.

Fletcher bit his lip hard, willing himself not to cry. The once-pristine arrow lay in two perfectly identical pieces.

Sucking his teeth in frustration, Alder shook his head, “What I’m doing is being a scientist.” He sat the scalpel down on the table and reached towards the arrow as he continued. “Something you two should learn, if you’re so intent on solving ‘mysteries.’”

With a flourish, he held something in Fletcher’s face.

It took a moment or two for the boy to figure out what it was:  a piece of yellowed cloth that had been wrapped around itself and tied with thread, forming a cylinder thin enough to slide inside the hollowed-out arrow.

The boy reached out to touch it, but Alder pulled the item away at the last second.

“This is, in fact, quite old. If you want to see what it is, we need to be cautious.”

Forgetting all about the fact that a moment ago, he had wanted to punch the man in the face, Gideon perked up, “Can we wear lab coats?”

Alder’s look was dark.

“If you promise to shut up.”

Fletcher smiled.

 ---

“It was his, Grandma. I just knew it when I found it in the tree. And Alder, he helped us figure out what it was. A message arrow! A message for you!”

Ruth Everdeen sat on the couch in her daughter’s home, flanked by two eager nine-year-olds. Lying across her knees were two perfectly bisected halves of something she had never expected to see again.

 _The_ arrow.

The one he had made so many years ago when the only way to communicate was by meeting at the tree in the Meadow. Luke had taken one of his arrows and hollowed it so it could hold a brief message. For weeks, they had exchanged tiny scraps of fabric with brief messages written on them. With every message, she had fallen more deeply in love with the charming coal miner, and become more disillusioned with her life in town. But it had gotten lost and–

“Alder said that it wasn’t for him, or even me,” her grandson, the one with _his_ eyes, interrupted her thoughts. “He said I should give it to you, that you’d know what to do with it.” So kind and thoughtful. Just like his own father.

The white-haired woman’s hand trembled as she held the tiny scrap of cloth tightly in her fist. The words she had just read, Luke’s own words, never before seen, rang fresh in her mind. She could hear his voice clearly, reciting them back to her. The last few, especially.

“ _I love you, Ruthie_.”

Noticing his grandmother’s fragile emotional state, the blond-haired boy put his hand on her knee tentatively.

“I… I know it’s private… but… is it a _good_ message, Grandma?” he asked gently.

Blinking back the tears in her eyes, Ruth smiled.

“It’s _wonderful_ , Fletcher.”

 ---

Later that evening, the two young boys sat on the porch, legs stuck out from under the bannister, feet swinging in the warm summer air. Mrs. Everdeen had made them lemonade and told them stories about Fletcher’s grandfather, the man who could silence birds with his voice.

“So um… I wanted to say thanks, Gideon,” the blond boy began.

The taller boy leaned back to lie on the wooden boards, kicking out his feet so they stuck straight out and then slammed against the side of the porch when they fell down.

“What for? I didn’t do anything,” he said. “You’re the one who found the arrow, then insisted we go see Alder. I still say he’s a weirdo, but you gotta admit, he’s probably the smartest weirdo in the whole world.”

Fletcher scratched his head, “Well, maybe… but when we were back in the lab, and we thought he’d gone crazy, you were right there, standing up for me when I couldn’t do anything.”

“Awh, that was nothin’,” Gideon shrugged.

Fletcher lay on his back and turned his head toward his friend.

“If that’s what you think, Gideon.”

His friend held up his arm, to meet the blonde boy’s in their secret handshake.

“Well, you know,” Gideon grinned, looking up at the moths that fluttered around the porch light. “I guess as best friends go, you could do worse…”

 


	9. Artistic Appreciation

“I don’t think I’m very good at this,” Fletcher sighed to no one in particular. He stood in front of a small easel in a room full of the chatter of his classmates.

It was painting day.

Not many people knew it, but the entire fine art program at D12 junior and senior schools was paid for by Mellark’s Bakery, and Effie Trinket. The national government was too busy trying to focus on things like food distribution and population growth to subsidize things like that. But his father thought that art was important, as did Effie, so the school had an arts teacher and supplies, all courtesy of the bakery’s profits and the bizarre woman’s immense personal wealth.

But Fletcher knew. Due to what his father liked to call his mother’s “unrelenting practicality,” whatever that meant, Katniss felt that the money they were essentially giving away would be better spent making certain everyone was well fed. But Peeta vehemently disagreed, to the point that she gave in. Art was essential, his father had insisted. He wanted his children and their friends to be able to express themselves. Unsaid, but very obvious, was the notion that he was quite proud of how artistically talented both his children were.

And that unspoken pride bothered Fletcher on a level that he couldn’t really verbalize. So he stood in front of his blank easel, clean brush in hand, with absolutely no idea what to paint, while everyone else in the room attacked their rolled paper canvases with vigor.

To his left, Gideon was attempting to recreate his game-winning hit from their stickball game earlier that afternoon. Although the taller boy was, by all accounts incompetent with a brush, he was still riding high from his victory. His painting, though perhaps not the most accurate depiction of the event, was vibrant and expressive. More importantly, the young boy seemed to be having the time of his life.

Across the room, Daisy was covering her canvas with huge swaths of black paint, covering up something yellow. She was scowling at Zeke Alberts, who had made an offhand observation about her original image reminding her of someone, if he could just think of it…

But he had been silenced by a face full of yellow paint.

There were cats and dogs and houses and someone had even decided to try and paint the entire town. In the center of the circle of easels sat their teacher, Miss Honeywell, a tall woman with long, thick blonde hair. She was, Fletcher supposed, quite pretty, even though she was _old_ , probably twenty-five or something. She was really funny; she could even make his mom laugh, so he liked her a lot. 

Miss Honeywell wore a smock, and she was painting, just like the students were. She always did, and it made class really fun to see what she had made by the end.

But art class was getting less and less fun by the week. Fletcher and Hope both had art on the same day. Fletcher would walk to the bakery, whatever he had made tucked into his backpack, only to find his sister already showing their father whatever masterpiece she’d created.

Hope was in seventh form, and she was _really_ good.

No matter how good he thought his painting had been in class, Fletcher always ended up keeping it in his backpack. When his father asked what he’d made, Fletcher just started sweeping the floor, telling him he’d show him after he was finished with his chores.

Peeta inevitably forgot.

There were benefits to having a dad with a broken brain.

So the bakery was filled with Hope’s paintings while Fletcher’s were all stuffed under his bed. And the young boy swept the floor while his dad and sister went on and on about painting their _feelings_.

Fletcher tried to paint his feelings, he really did. But they never came out like anything other than shapeless blobs. He didn’t _want_ to paint his feelings, but everyone seemed to think that was where good art came from. And he knew he was supposed to be good at art – only _everyone_ he knew told him about it.

But he wasn’t an artist. Not like Hope or his dad. He was just a kid who could draw. That was okay, he guessed. Only… his dad was going to be really disappointed.

He felt the brush droop in his hand as the bell rang and he realized he’d been staring at the canvas without moving for almost five minutes.

Gideon tore off his painting and waved it around excitedly. “Wow, I cannot wait to tell my parents about this game!”

Fletcher smiled at him.

“You comin’?” his friend seemed eager to go.

Fletcher shrugged, “I’ll be out in a bit. I need to um… do some things.”

“Okay. See you later!”

His friend gone, and the rest of his class jostling each other as they filed out the door, Fletcher let out a deep breath, appreciating his solitude.

“That’s an interesting painting, that’s for sure,” a voice behind him said.

He nearly jumped out of his skin in shock at Miss Honeywell’s sudden appearance. The woman pulled up her stool, and sat in front of his blank canvas, as though she were critiquing it.

“I like the stark composition,” she tapped the side of her chin. “Very minimalistic, which can be great when done right. I’ve got to say though, Fletcher, you could stand to be a bit more adventurous with color.”

Fletcher let out a small, embarrassed laugh.

“So are you gonna tell me why you spent the entire class staring off into space? Or do I have to resort to torture?” the woman smirked.

“I just… didn’t know what to paint,” Fletcher said lamely.

Miss Honeywell made a confused face, “Your teachers tell me you _never_ stop drawing. And you’re nine. Ideas shouldn’t be a problem for you, Fletcher.”

He shook his head, “Well, that’s just drawing. This is _art_. It’s serious. I have to paint what I feel.”

Miss Honeywell crossed her arms and leaned back. “Oh really? Who told you that?”

“Well, nobody told me, really but my dad and sister, they’re always saying how paintings talk about feelings. And I just…”

“You’re just nine,” Miss Honeywell finished. “Not that being nine isn’t good. I wish I were nine. Trust me, this is as good as it ever gets. No responsibility, lots of fun stuff to do, nobody expects you to act like a grown-up…”

“You mean growing up isn’t any good?” Fletcher was nervous. He had plans for his adulthood that involved, at the very least, staying overnight in the woods for more than the single night his mother seemed capable of lasting. She insisted that his father couldn’t stand to be without her for longer than that, but Fletcher heard her cry out in her sleep, and he was pretty certain she was the one who didn’t like to be without him.

Laughing a little to herself, Miss Honeywell said, “Well, there are _some_ perks, but for the most part, you’re better off.”

“What kind of perks?”

She cleared her throat, “You’ll figure that out soon enough. But back to painting, well, sorry, but your dad and sister are wrong.”

“They’re really good at painting, though,” Fletcher insisted, a bit defensive.

Miss Honeywell stood up and strode back to the center of the room where her easel had been set up. “I’m not saying they’re not good. Or even that they don’t paint their feelings. But, what I am saying is not everyone does that.” Grasping her canvas (a real one on a frame and everything), she picked it up and held it out. It was a painting of Daisy, of all people, and it was from just earlier. In the painting, the girl was staring at the black smears on her own picture and sighing. There was a look on her face that was almost wistful. Fletcher thought she looked… well, nice. Almost pretty, even, which made no sense because Daisy was nothing but mean, and in his mind, that made prettiness all but dry up.

His teacher had to be really good to paint something like that. And it was all in purple, too, which seemed extra special somehow. The picture made him feel something. He couldn’t really describe the feeling because he’d never really experienced it before. But it was definitely an emotion, of that he was certain.

“So, what do you think I was feeling when I painted this?” Miss Honeywell asked.

Fletcher shook his head and was quiet for a long time. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “I’m not certain, but it must have been a pretty big feeling.”

“Nope. Wrong.”

The boy blinked in confusion.

“It’s simple. I don’t paint my feelings, Fletcher,” the woman shrugged, which made her long blonde ponytail swing. “If anything, I paint to distract myself from feelings. I just paint to paint. I get ideas, and I have to paint them. There’s no ‘deep meaning’ or anything. I make art for the pleasure of making it.”

“Like how I draw while Mrs. Odair is teaching?” the boy asked, forgetting that teachers weren’t supposed to know that information.

“Just like that,” the woman said, unconcerned about the young boy’s lack of classroom focus.

“But isn’t art supposed to _mean_ something?”

Miss Honeywell laughed.

“Maybe. I dunno. I just make it. Let everyone else worry about what it means.”

Fletcher nodded, as though he were taking in one of the deep truths of the universe, as his teacher took her canvas and leaned it against the wall to dry.

“Miss Honeywell,” he finally began.

“Yes, Fletcher?”

“Can I stay here and finish my painting?”

“I was hoping you would.”

 ---

“So, this is Gideon, hitting the ball that won the game?” his dad asked, a huge smile on his face as he rolled out the crust for the groosling pie he was in the middle of preparing.

Fletcher nodded, and tried to keep the smile from taking over his face.

His mother, who had been quietly plucking one of the grooslings for said pie, spoke up suddenly.

“I really like how it’s all… wavy. Like, it’s a dream or something.” It was obvious that she felt embarrassed for making such an artistic observation, because immediately afterwards, she chopped the head off of the bird with a loud thwack. Behind the counter, her husband tried to swallow back his laugh of pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, it just turned into an awkward and obvious cough. Katniss swung her head around and scowled at him.

From her seat at the kitchen table, where she had been studiously doing her homework for most of the late afternoon, Hope looked up, at the commotion. She squinted at the picture, and then appreciatively added, “You must have been feeling something pretty intense to paint something like that. I’m impressed.”

Fletcher shrugged.

What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. 


	10. Girls

Daisy Thatcher really bugged him.

She really, _really_ bugged him.

There wasn’t a single day, a single _day_ where the girl wasn’t causing some kind of mayhem in his life and Fletcher was sick of it.

You’d think at nine years old she’d be past that sort of behavior.

You’d really think.

But no, she wasn’t, and in order to prove just how very much not past it she was, she had dumped an entire tin cup of milk on his head during lunch.

And then…

AND THEN.

She had stood up in the schoolyard, bellowing like she always did about how _stupid_ he was, while streams of milk dripped into his eyes. Everyone saw, and a lot of them laughed. It had been humiliating.

Everyone knew Daisy was a bully, but there was usually some kind of reasoning behind her actions. Granted, her reasons never were very good, but still, it at least made sense for her to retaliate if he had accidentally stepped on her foot, or even breathed wrong close to her, or something. This time, though, he hadn’t even been doing _anything_ , just showing Annika Potter how to draw a dog so it didn’t look like a horse. Annika had been asking him for help drawing a lot lately, which was kind of weird. But Fletcher would have to be lying to say that he didn’t like to help. It was flattering to know someone thought his pictures were good enough to learn from. Anyway, the two of them had been sitting quietly while Daisy had been all the way at the other end of the schoolyard playing stickball. Why she had to leave her game to torment him, he just couldn’t figure out. It made no sense.

And yet here he was, walking home with Gideon, trying to ignore the horrible squelchy feeling of his wet socks in his shoes. His normally untameable blonde hair was plastered flat on his head, and the milk was drying on his skin, and making it hurt to smile.

“You’ve gotta do something about her, Fletcher” his friend shook his head and made a tsk-ing noise. “This is gettin’ _crazy_.”

“I just don’t understand it,” Fletcher looked up at him through the lank strands of blond hair that hung in his face. “Usually she only picks on me when we’re, you know, next to each other and stuff.”

“But she wasn’t,” Gideon said sagely. “In fact, she was all the way across the yard. If you let her get away with _this_ , who knows what she’s gonna do next? It’s a slippery slope!”

“What do you expect me to do? I’m not gonna hit a girl.”

“Fletcher, you don’t hit anyone,” Gideon scoffed. “I’ve never even seen you shove anybody.”

The shorter blond boy kicked a stone hard, “I just don’t think that ever helps anything.”

Gideon shrugged, “Maybe, maybe not. But bein’ tough gets results. And if you don’t want Daisy makin’ your life miserable for the rest of junior school, you gotta do something.”

“I’m just gonna ignore her,” Fletcher said firmly. “She’ll get bored eventually.”

“Yeah, cause she hasn’t been picking on you since kinderschool or anything…” Gideon muttered just before a girl’s voice rang out from behind them.

“Fletcher! Wait up!” the girl called out, running up the sidewalk. When she caught up with them, she put her hand on Fletcher’s shoulder while she took a few deep breaths.

Gideon chuckled, but said nothing.

“Hi Annika,” Fletcher smiled, then winced as his skin pulled tight from the dried milk.

“Oh, I can’t _believe_ she did that to you,” she gasped, pushing one of her dark braids behind her ear.

Fletcher shrugged.

“She’s always picking on you,” she continued, reaching up to brush some of his hair out of his eyes. “It’s just not very nice.”

Gideon cleared his throat.

“Oh, hi Gideon!” she said sweetly. “I didn’t even notice you there.”

He snorted, “I’ve been here the whole time, Annika.”  

She laughed lightly, “Oh yeah, of course… anyway, I was wondering, Fletcher, if you wanted to come over to my house after you’re done with your chores and help me with my drawing some more?”

“Sorry, but Fletcher is _busy,_ ” Gideon stressed.

Turning his head as delicately as he could, given the circumstances, Fletcher raised his eyebrow, “I am?”

“Don’t you remember? We’ve been waiting for your mom to finish carving me a bow for MONTHS. You, Fletcher Mellark, promised to teach me how to shoot as soon as it was finished, and it’s finished _today._ ”

“Oh,” Fletcher said, shaking his head and grimacing. “Guess I forgot in all the _excitement_. Sorry Annika.”

The dark-haired girl stopped walking and looked extremely disappointed.

“Oh, well, could you maybe come over tomorrow and help me? I’m really interested in art, you see…” she began.

“ _Sure_ you are…” Gideon coughed under his breath.

“Well, I’d have to ask my parents, but if it’s okay with them, sure.”

“Alright then,” said brightly, staying put as they continued to walk forward. She turned her head, then called back over her shoulder, “It’s a date.”

“She’s really getting interested in art,” Fletcher scratched his head with confusion. “Maybe I should have her talk to Hope, or my dad. They’re a lot better than I… am…”

He trailed off because his best friend had thrown back his head, and was laughing loudly.

“For such a smart kid, you’re really dense, ya know?”

Wrinkling his nose in the closest to anger that the even-keeled boy ever got, unless of course, his sister was involved, Fletcher opened his mouth in protest.

“That girl does not care one bit about art,” Gideon continued, before his friend could get a word in edgewise.

“Then why is she asking me to help her draw all the time?”

Snorting, his best friend continued, running his fingers through his messy black hair, “Because she _likes_ you, Fletcher.”

“Well, yeah, I mean, I like her too. She’s really nice, and today she gave me some sweets. You can have one, if you want.”

It was demonstrative of his best friend’s concern that the offer of sweets went completely unnoticed. “No no no, she _likes_ you, likes you…”

Stopping completely in the middle of the green, Fletcher looked at Gideon like he had grown a second head.  

“She used the d-word,” Gideon threw up his hands. “Doesn’t that _mean_ anything to you? If you don’t pay attention to this stuff, next thing you know, you’re gonna be accidentally toasting or something. Do not, under any circumstances, take bread from Annika Potter, or, you know what, from _any_ other girl in our class. Do you hear me?”

“Well, I could probably take it from Daisy,” Fletcher laughed to himself, before a thought struck him. “But that’d probably be bad idea too, ‘cause she’d only ever give me something that had bugs in it.”

The two boys sighed heavily as they marched towards the bakery.

“Girls are confusing,” Fletcher finally broke the silence.

“It was easier when we just hated them completely,” Gideon said remorsefully.

“The good old days are gone forever,” his best friend sighed.

\--- 

The bell on the door jingled as the two boys entered the bakery storefront. Standing behind the counter, Fletcher’s father was squinting as he iced a tray full of cookies. He was holding the handle of a spatula in his teeth, but he called out a garbled greeting anyway.

“Hey dad,” Fletcher said listlessly, tossing his bag onto a chair by a window and grabbing an apron from a hook.

“Hi Mister Mellark,” Gideon nodded, before he made a fist and slapped his own wrist twice against his friend’s in a practiced handshake. “See you both later.”

The door had shut behind the boy before Fletcher called after him, “Yeah… see you later.” 

After a long pause during which the boy stared into space almost despondently, he picked up a broom that stood in the corner, and began violently whipping it across the floor, throwing more dust into the air than he swept up. As he moved across the room, a trail of milk drops followed in his wake.

His father watched him for a while, elbows on the counter and chin in his hands, before he finally said, “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or should I just put in an order for new floor tiles so you can sweep these ones down to nothing?”

Fletcher just grunted.

After watching him for a little while longer, his father added, “Much as I can appreciate the glowing effects on hair and skin that your full body milk treatment will eventually have, don’t let your mom see you like that. You know how she is about wasting food.”

Fletcher turned quickly and shouted hoarsely at his father, “I didn’t _do_ this, okay?”

With gentle compassion in his eyes, Peeta asked, “Then who did, son?”

Immediately feeling guilty for snapping at his father, but also unwilling to reveal more than was necessary, Fletcher shrugged and muttered, “Just some girl.”

His father’s eyebrows shot up so high that they would have been hidden under his hair, if his hairline was still in the place it was supposed to be. 

“You’re acknowledging girls now, mm?”

“They’re just _people_ , dad,” Fletcher rolled his eyes.

Peeta stood upright and put his hands on his hips, “Are you certain? Because you had me almost convinced that I should make your mother sleep on the couch.”

“I’ve been talking to girls since I started the third form,” he began sweeping again.

Nodding as though he’d been imparted a particularly significant piece of information, his father picked up his pastry bag to continue his work, then sat it back down, as he remembered something.

“Speaking of girls, one from your class was just here, no more than five minutes ago.”

“She wasn’t buying bread, was she?” Fletcher asked suspiciously.

Peeta shook his head, “No, but she did buy all that was left of your cookies from yesterday. Now, if I could only remember her name…”

“How many were left?” Fletcher leaned on the broom and cocked his head curiously.

“Oh, she bought about four dozen. But she always does, every week. I swear, no one else in town has ever even gets to try that recipe you made up because this girl just _loves_ them.”

“What girl though, Dad?”

“Oh son, I’m sorry, you know how bad my memory gets sometimes. Let me see… she’s got really curly dark hair, dark skin, the sweetest little brown eyes, and oh, yeah, an adorable little gap between her front teeth.”

“DAISY?!?” Fletcher gaped.

Smacking his head, Peeta groaned, “Yes, _Daisy_. That’s her name. I always remember when she’s here, but as soon as she goes, I can only seem to remember ‘the cute little gap-toothed girl’.”

“But… why would she eat the cookies that _I_ invented? I mean… it says right on the case, ‘Fletcher’s Surprisingly Spicy Cookies.’ And she _hates_ me. Why would she want something I made?”

“Well, I dunno, son,” his dad shrugged. “Maybe she really likes chocolate and cayenne. I mean, they are really good, although I can’t say many kids other than you think so. Or maybe her parents want them.”

“She lives with her grandma,” the young boy threw up his hands, sending droplets of milk everywhere. “Mrs. Thatcher has… uh… diabees or something. She can’t even eat cookies.”

“Well, maybe the girl just has refined tastes,” Peeta grinned knowingly.

Spinning on his heels dramatically, Fletcher fell onto his back, the broom clattering to the floor by his side.

“I don’t think I understand girls at _all_ ,” he moaned.

From behind the counter, he could hear his dad chuckle softly, “You and me both, little man.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story fills the prompt "Oblivious to girls."


	11. The Sleepover

It was ten pm, and Fletcher was still awake. By all accounts, it was way past his bedtime, but he just couldn’t sleep. He’d chickened out, again, but there were no more chances this time. If he didn’t ask now, he might as well just not ask at all.

He climbed out of his absurdly high bed, and began to pace the floor. The feet of his pajamas made scuffing noises against the hardwood floor. They were ridiculous, these pajamas, with little bows and arrows on them that Effie had sent from the Capitol, but they were comfortable, and he was going to wear them in secret until they didn’t fit anymore.

“I’m gonna do it,” he said quietly, trying to build up his courage. “I’m gonna do it, and they’re going to say yes.”

After repeating this mantra about a dozen times, he finally got the courage to open his door and step out into the hallway. He padded quietly past Hope’s room, hoping she wouldn’t hear the sound and pop her head out. She’d make fun of his pajamas for certain.

He was so focused on watching his feet that he didn’t notice the bathroom door was wide open, light spilling into the hallway, until he walked right into the illuminated spot. Frozen, he turned his head to see if maybe, by some miracle, Hope had just forgotten to turn off the light.

No such luck.

His sister was perched on the sink, holding her head at an odd angle so that her chin was jutting out towards the mirror. With her fingers, she seemed to be pushing and pulling at her skin. The sight was so bizarre that Fletcher forgot completely about his pajamas.

“Um, what are you doing?”

Hope was flustered, that much was obvious. She dropped her hands as though they had suddenly caught fire, and spun around on the sink, to lean down and glare at him.

“Nothing. Just… nothing. What are you even doing up?” she looked really embarrassed, until a thought struck her. “And what are you _wearing_?”

Remembering his pajamas, Fletcher grinned awkwardly, “Uh, everything else was dirty?”

“Nice try,” Hope scoffed. “Hazelle brought the laundry last night. Even if she hadn’t, you’re an awful liar so–”

“Wait, are you _squeezing your pimples_?” Fletcher interjected with the sort of glee only little brothers can know.

Hope’s eyes widened in horror. “No! I don’t even _have_ any pimples.”

Fletcher grinned slowly, his eyes half-lidded, “Now whose the bad liar? I heard you asking Mom about them last week. You should probably ask Dad, instead, you know. I think Mom uses that ratty old soap that she makes on her face, hair, and dirty fingernails. She’s not gonna be good help.”

The door slammed in his face.

“This moment never happened!” came his sister’s muffled voice.

The young boy smiled again, until he remembered why it was he was in the hall at all. Taking a deep breath, he continued, making his way down the stairs.

His parents tended to spend their evenings on the living room couch. He had no real idea what they did there. Sometimes he could hear the faint buzz of the television as he fell asleep, but more often than not, he didn’t. This was, at least, one mystery that was about to be solved, but the thought didn’t serve to make him any less nervous.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he whipped himself around the bannister, hoping the extra momentum would make him braver. Instead, the feet of his pajamas slid across the floor, and he ended up sprawling in front of the couch.

So much for making a confident entrance.

“You alright, Squirrel?” his mother asked with concern in her voice.

Propping himself up, the boy nodded, then took his father’s outstretched hand and got to his feet.

The mystery wasn’t all that mysterious. His father had the old ratty book Fletcher saw Hope pouring over all the time propped on the arm of the couch, and he was drawing a picture of a flower in it. His mother didn’t seem to be doing much of anything, just lying with her head on his father’s lap, but on the table was a really fancy pen, like she had just been writing something.

He decided that maybe Miss Honeywell was right, and being an adult was actually pretty boring.

“So, what brings you downstairs at this hour, son?” his father asked, eyebrow raised.

Putting his hands behind his back, and taking a deep breath, Fletcher pooled all of his courage, and asked, “Can I please stay the night at Clem’s house tomorrow?” With the initial question out, all of his well-organized reasoning for why exactly he should be allowed to go came pouring out. “You see, it’s not a school night, and I’ve done all my homework ahead of time, and I did extra chores today at the bakery when you weren’t looking and I’ll do extra on Monday too, and even for the rest of the week, and all of the boys in our form are going to be there and I really, really wanna go and just can I please?”

“Fletcher, I don’t know about this,” his father frowned thoughtfully. “Can’t you just invite your friends over here? You can all set up in the study – there’s even a fireplace in there. I could light a fire and you could roast marshmallows…”

“But _Dad_ ,” the boy stressed, wringing his hands behind his back, “I’ve never been to a sleepover, _ever_.”

Putting his pen aside, Peeta closed the book and sat it on the table, then sat up straight, jostling his wife who made a low noise of protest.

“That’s not true, Fletcher. Only two weeks ago, Gideon was over here – I swear the two of you kept us up half the night. And don’t you remember your birthday? I think we had six boys in the house. Your sister complained for _weeks_.”

“But that was a sleepover that I _had,_ not one that I’ve _gone_ to. I’ve never gone to anyone’s house for the night. Not even Gideon’s, and we’ve been friends since we were three.”

“Well, yes, but you know,” his father began stammering, “Gideon’s has so many little sisters, and his house isn’t nearly as large as ours, and–“

Quite abruptly, Fletcher’s mother sat up, effectively shutting up her husband.

“I see his mother every day when I drop off my game to be butchered at their shop. As long as everything’s straight with her, you can go.”

Through the buzzing haze of relief that filled his brain, Fletcher could vaguely hear his father protest, before his mother said, “Peeta, we talked about this,” in the sort of voice she used when Fletcher wanted to throw away the last, gamey piece of venison in the fridge, or when Hope had come downstairs wearing the makeup that Effie had given her for her twelfth birthday.

No one argued with that voice. Ever.

Well, Haymitch had. At the thought, Fletcher felt his heart clench tight, and overcome with emotion, he rushed forward and hugged his mother.  She squeezed him back so tight it almost hurt. Even though she was small, her arms were almost impossibly strong.

The rumbling sound of his father clearing his throat filled his ear, and he let go of his mother.

“Well, since apparently I’ve been overruled, can I at least get a consolation hug?” Peeta said wryly.

Fletcher obliged him.

\--- 

With one hand fisting his pillowcase filled with all the items necessary for a sleepover, Fletcher and his mother walked towards town. It was dusk, and the late summer humidity was dissipating in the evening breeze. His mother sighed quietly, happily, as the breeze picked up the fine strands of hair that had escaped her braid, and drew them across the nape of her neck.

Fletcher had packed and unpacked four times that afternoon. He had started out with a suitcase he found in his parents’ room, then moved on to his backpack, and then finally decided on the pillowcase, which is what all the other boys used, according to Gideon. But he had filled it with too much to carry so it had been necessary to prioritize what he really needed, and then repack.

It was serious business, going to one’s first sleepover.

His mother walked in long quiet strides that Fletcher worked hard to match. On Saturdays when they hunted together, she sometimes stood still for what seemed like hours without making a sound. He was getting better, but he didn’t know if he’d ever be as quiet as she was, especially if he ended up as broad shouldered as his dad when he grew up.

On one hand, being strong would be really great. He could lift heavy things, and everyone would be really impressed. But on the other hand, he rarely felt quite as happy as when he was in the woods with his mother, and he figured the better he could hunt with her, the happier they’d both be.

Luckily he was only nine, and he had plenty of time before such things as enormous muscles developed.

Clem’s mother and father were the town butchers, and his mother knew them well. She had insisted his father stay at home, since he was bound to make a scene. When Peeta argued this fact, she had brought up the time that Fletcher had twisted his ankle.

Though Fletcher didn’t remember anything out of the ordinary happening when he had fallen out of a tree a year and a half ago, he had also been given sleep syrup right away. He figured something noteworthy must have taken place, for his dad to shut up so quickly after the event in question was brought up.

It was nice though, walking with his mom. She was quiet a lot of the time, but it never made him feel like he needed to fill the silence. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in his mind that she was just happy to spend time with him. They didn’t have to say anything to make that time special. It already was.

Before they reached the butcher shop, she stopped and pulled two small, identical devices out of the satchel she wore on her waist.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked simply, with a small smile.

Fletcher shook his head.

She handed him one of the devices, then told him to run around the corner of the grocery. He dropped his pillowcase and ran as fast as he could, desperately curious as to what the device could do. He leaned against the wall, waiting for something to happen.

There was a crackle, and then he could hear his mother’s whispered voice.

Rushing back around the building, he waved the talking box around excitedly.

“This is so neat!” he grinned. “What is it?”

She shrugged, “Beetee sent them to us. He told your dad what they were called, but… well, you know how your dad’s memory is.”

Fletcher chuckled.

“They’re yours, but I’m going to keep one for tonight. If anything happens that makes you feel scared or unsafe, I want you to press the button, and call for me. You just have to use a regular voice, or you can even whisper like I did. I’ll hear you.”

“After tonight, can I give one to Gideon, so we can talk?”

Katniss smirked before nodding, “As long as this doesn’t mean you stay up all night chattering.”

“That’s what we should call them!” Fletcher ran forward and jumped, unable to contain his excitement at how good the evening was going. “Chatterboxes!”

“That’s a perfect name, squirrel.”

He was so excited that he didn’t even squirm at his mother’s use of his embarrassing nickname where someone could overhear, and instead spent the last block and a half to the butcher shop going on about all of the possible uses for Beetee’s chatterboxes.

 ---

Waking up from a nightmare was never fun.

Waking up from a nightmare, only to realize that a terrible storm was going on outside, and he had no idea where he was was even worse.

But that was the very situation Fletcher found himself in as he sat up in terror, surrounded by seven other boys on a strange living room floor. Closest to him, Gideon snored so loudly he almost drowned out the thunder. All of the other boys were so deep in sleep that neither the snoring, nor the wall-shaking thunderclaps woke them at all.

Fletcher bit his lip. The fact was, he was terrified: a deep incomprehensible fear seeping down to his very bones. The storm was so loud, and in his dream, he had been taken away.

Taken to… well, he didn’t like to think about it, if he could manage.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop, now that he was awake. He wasn’t even twelve. It had just been a dumb dream, and one he hadn’t had since last year, when his mom and dad had sat him down and explained a lot more about the Games than his teacher ever had in school.

Some kids might be proud of the fact that their parents were heroes, and Fletcher supposed he was, but more than that, when he really allowed himself to think about it, he was _terrified_. They had just been taken from their homes and their families.

What if that happened again? What if they were gone _right now_.

He knew it wouldn’t. He knew they were safe at home, and so was Hope and all of her dumb animals. He _knew_ it was okay.

But his nightmares didn’t care what he knew.

Turning onto his stomach, he reached under his pillow for the chatterbox, then pulled it close to his mouth, his fingers grasping at the cold metal.

“Mom?” he called quietly, holding down the button, and almost forgetting to let go.

There was a moment that seemed like an eternity, but in reality, had to be only about twenty seconds, and then the chatterbox crackled.

“Are you okay, Fletcher?” came his mother’s concerned but sleepy voice.

The boy let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding.

“Yeah, I’m okay, Mom. The lightning woke me up, and Gideon is snoring and I just…”

“It’s okay,” he could almost hear her smile. “Your dad is snoring too.”

There was another crackle, and then his dad grumpily said, “I am not. I’m awake, listening to this character assassination.”

Fletcher laughed, “So you’re all okay then?”

The box crackled, and then Katniss could be heard again, with laughter in her voice, “Yes, we’re fine. And your father is checking on your sister, even though I can hear her snoring through the wall.”

“We’re lucky we don’t snore, right mom?” he said, happy just to hear her voice.

The chatterbox crackled for a long time, then he could hear her laughing, “We definitely got lucky, you and me. Well, your dad is back and he says, ‘All is quiet on the homestead.’”

Fletcher laughed again at his mother’s rare attempt at imitating someone else, “Okay, well, I guess I’ll go back to sleep then.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come and get you?” his father’s voice was back. “I’m very good at climbing into windows. Or, I’m very good at watching your mom climbing into them, at least.”

“No, Dad. I’m okay.”

“We love you, son.”

Fletcher pulled the blankets over his head and curled into the tiniest ball imagineable, so no one else could hear.

“I love you guys too. A whole bunch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fills the prompt "first trip away from home."


	12. Crush

“Oh Fletcher, I just _loved_ the way you pitched in stickball today,” Annika said, smiling so wide her dimples looked like craters. “You definitely won the game.”

“Well, that’s really nice of you to say,” the blond boy rubbed the back of his neck as they walked towards the town green, “but actually Gideon was the one who got the winning hit, so I think you’d have to say that he won.”

The fact was, Gideon won almost all the games. Fletcher didn’t mind much, because Gideon was his best friend. In fact, he was pretty proud of him. Today especially had been an amazing hit that had gone fast and hard right between two players. The dark-haired boy had run like a deer, kicking up clouds of dust before he skidded into the home base just at the last second. It had been a great win.

And Gideon _definitely_ knew he deserved credit.

“Yeah!” the taller boy was indignant. “What am I? Chopped liver?”

“Oh!” Annika jumped, startled by his outburst, “I’m sorry Gideon, I didn’t even see you there.”

Gideon rolled his eyes.

“And yes, I will admit, it was a very fine hit," the girl continued unfazed, "but if Fletcher hadn’t pitched so well, the other team would have been so far ahead that… Fletcher? _Fletcher?_ Are you even listening to me?”

He wasn’t.

“Who… is _that?_ ” he croaked.

“Who’re you talking about?” Gideon asked, bewildered. But he wasn’t really asking anyone, because, head tilted at an awkward angle, Fletcher was wandering into the center of the green. Towards a girl.

There were plenty of girls that he had seen before. In general, Fletcher was pretty observant, thanks to his mother. It was important to always know your surroundings as a hunter, and she had taught him to be aware of where he was all of the time. That meant paying attention to people just as much as trees.

But he had never really _looked_ at a girl before. Not like this.

Her hair was red, like maple leaves in the fall, and it fell down her back in long curly loops so very different than the snarled frizzy mass his sister had, or even the tiny tight curls on Daisy’s head that seemed to defy gravity. He tried to think of some kind of natural phenomenon to compare this new girl’s hair to, but came up blank.

It just looked _really_ nice.

She was talking to two other girls. Fletcher was vaguely aware that he somehow knew them, but when the girl laughed and tossed her hair, white teeth gleaming in the sunlight, their names completely flew away. His sister, who was one of said girls, would have been particularly insulted by this fact, but Fletcher was not about to tell her, since he currently found himself incapable of speech.

“Fletcher, what are you doing?” Gideon elbowed him hard, jarring him back into some semblance of reality. He and Annika had followed him into the green. Annika looked like she was about to either cry, or scream. Probably both.

“I… uhh…” Fletcher glanced at them and then back at the girl nervously.

Gideon crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.

“You know what? I don’t even wanna know,” he laughed to himself as he walked back to the sidewalk and on towards his neighborhood.

Annika huffed and followed, tossing her hair vehemently, for once siding with the taller boy.

Unsure what to make of their behavior, Fletcher turned back to the red-headed girl.

She was laughing again, but this time her face was turned completely towards his, and he could clearly see her features. Upturned nose, dark luminous eyes, and skin that was covered in freckles.

Not that many people in District 12 had freckles, and they were usually only the scattered few that came out in the summer and sprung up on noses. But this girl was completely covered with them, gloriously splotchy across her otherwise cream-white skin, paler even than his father and sister. He’d seen a few people like this before, especially in documentaries on the subject of the switch to nuclear energy. The camera people liked to interview old power plant workers from District 5. A lot of them had red hair. But they were old, and their hair looked washed out, freckles turned into age spots on sagging cheeks.

This girl was not old.

Well, she was kinda old. As old as his sister, it seemed like, but he knew just by looking at her that there was no possible way she could be as annoying as Hope.

He steadily approached, closer and closer, trying to figure out what on earth to say when he overheard her ask if either girl knew a good place to pick flowers.

“Well,” Hope began in that way she sometimes had of acting too smart for her own good, “if you just walk straight through town and–”

“I can take you!” Fletcher interrupted in a voice that sounded two octaves higher than normal.

His sister turned and scowled darkly. At her side, her best friend Lindy Alberts giggled.

Lindy was always giggling.

“Fletcher, what are you doing here?” Hope demanded. “Don’t you have some _lower school_ game to play or something? I’m sure the other _children_ are waiting for you.”

He fought back the burning that rose to his cheeks at her words. Hope hated to be surprised, and she had a sharp tongue whenever that happened. It was likely that tomorrow morning Fletcher would find lavender candy or a charcoal pencil outside his bedroom door as a peace offering. She’d probably do extra work at the bakery today too, so he had less to do during his next shift.

But for the moment, his sister was the enemy.

“I was just thinking that you have to go to the bakery today, Hope, so maybe I could show your friend how to get to the flowers?” he said softly, but confidently. “I know where all the best ones are.”

“No you don’t,” Hope said so scathingly that Fletcher’s head drooped and he began to walk away. She was probably right. Hope basically hoarded flowers, trying to make them into tinctures to heal pretty much any animal in the district that so much as sneezed. There was no question she knew secret places in the woods where they grew in abundance. She had been spending time in there three whole years longer than he had.

He might as well go off and be alone with his embarrassment.

“Wait,” the red-haired girl said in a way that made him feel like she was pulling his heart out of his mouth with a string.

He turned, ignoring his sister’s glare and Lindy’s continued giggling.

“Not-the-best flowers are still better than no flowers at all,” she smiled, and as she did his ears filled with a strange buzzing sound.  It was a perfect smile, not as wide and terrifying as Annika’s, but not small and smirking like his sister’s mocking one either. It made him feel scared and happy all at the same time.

“Can I take you then?” he blurted out, his voice cracking in a fine imitation of Jasper Hawthorne’s and Lindy burst into giggles again.

Fletcher suddenly felt a great deal of empathy for the older boy he and Gideon had constantly laughed at. 

 ***

He was walking with an older girl. A real live girl, one in the Upper School, who had hair that looked like it was spun out of fall leaves and eyes as dark as the night sky when there was no moon. An older girl who made him want to melt out of his toes and jump out of his skin.

An older girl who was _not_ his sister or Lindy.

Fletcher was not nearly as poetic as he hoped to be.

His arms were full of the flowers she had picked in the far corner of the Meadow. He also had a small handful of dandelions for his mother, but the redheaded girl hadn’t been interested in a flower so ordinary. She'd picked red columbine, larkspur, rosemallow and especially Queen Anne’s Lace, pulling it so hard that it came out by the roots, which she had ripped off and tossed away.

His mother would be furious, someone wasting food like that, but he didn’t think the redheaded girl even knew that the roots tasted kind of like carrots and were great when your stomach hurt. 

Maude. Her name was Maude. The unfamiliar name had sounded heavenly when she'd introduced herself, but it too beautiful for him to feel comfortable being all that familiar with yet. She had talked a lot about flowers, how she loved beautiful things and bright colors, and he had stood there stupidly, trying to come up with an interesting flower fact to share and finding that he didn’t have a single one.

It was especially infuriating since his father and mother had been writing a book on plants for basically their whole lives, and Hope seemed to know even more about flowers than they did. They all talked about plants almost every day. But he couldn’t remember anything a single one of them had ever said about flowers, so he had just stood there stupidly, watching her hair glimmer in the sunlight. 

She was so pretty he couldn’t really think.

So he just carried her flowers as she talked about how her family had just moved to Twelve from some other district and her mother was an administrator at the medicine factory and she was going to _make sure_ that the place got efficient. He had no idea what on earth she was talking about, and the competing perfumes from all of the flowers made him dizzy. It was hard to pay attention to anything, he felt so fuzzy and happy inside.

When he walked right into Daisy, it wasn’t all that surprising.

They both recoiled with an oof, landing on the ground at almost the same moment. He was okay, but Daisy had fallen backwards and her hands were scraped on the brick sidewalk. Fletcher could tell that it hurt her because she was biting her lip really hard, part of it catching on the gap in between her teeth. His own dandelions were secure in his fist but the other flowers scattered everywhere. Some of them were crushed and broken, but most of them were fine.

He was getting up to help Daisy when Maude exploded.

“You _stupid_ little gap-toothed brat,” she spat venomously, face red and blotching with fury. “Don’t you have any _sense_?”

Normally Daisy didn’t allow anyone to talk down to her, ever, but she didn’t say anything, just gasped a little. Fletcher saw her cradle her hands closer to her body and he figured they had to really hurt.

Maude was still furious, and her pretty face had distorted itself into something horrible. She circled Daisy on the sidewalk, like a bobcat ready to attack an injured rabbit.

“But look at you,” she sneered. “I bet you’re too _poor_ to afford glasses, so of _course_ you can't exactly watch where you’re going.”

Daisy grit her teeth and squeezed her hands into fists.

Fletcher hadn’t really ever thought about it before, but Daisy _was_ really poor. She lived with her grandmother, an older woman who had moved them both from District 11 years ago. No one knew why they had come to Twelve, but they didn’t question it. Mrs. Thatcher wove baskets, something she had done with tall grasses in the fields in Eleven, but people didn’t need baskets every day, so Fletcher didn’t think she made a lot of money. Daisy’s dresses were always too big or too small. A lot of them had holes in them.

But all of the Albert’s kids wore clothes with holes in them. Since there was an Alberts in almost every class, and their dad was the _mayor,_ no one Twelve seemed to care.

Maude was new, though. And she seemed to care a lot.

She turned to Fletcher and smiled at him, her face back to how pretty it had been before. The smile was even softer and nicer than her others had been, and it made his heart flutter to see it again. He felt important and special and he tried to focus on those feelings, but it didn't feel right.

“Fletcher, will you please pick up what’s left of my flowers?” she asked in the sweetest voice she’d yet used.

And he wanted to. Daisy was mean, she pushed him all of the time, and made kids laugh at him, too. She was the worst friend he had, if he could even call her that. But seeing her on the sidewalk, little streams of blood running down her wrists from the cracks in her fists, biting her lip so hard he thought that was going to bleed too, made his heart hurt more than anything. Maude’s sweet voice felt wrong, like the candy Effie had brought once. It was supposed be sweet without making you get fat, but it tasted wrong.

Fake.

Maude smiled even softer and put her hand on his shoulder.

Fake.

“Let’s go, Fletcher.”

He pulled away from her, not hard, but hard enough, and then crouched next to Daisy.

“Are you… um… okay?” he asked, a little nervous that the girl on the ground was going to sock him in the jaw. 

At his snub, Maude’s face turned uglier than it had been before. She was so angry she shook as she shouted.

“Fine! I only went with you because I knew you’d do all the work. You’re just a shrimpy kid, anyway. I bet you’re the shortest kid in your class!”

Crouching down, she gathered the flowers into her skirt, then stormed off. Fletcher watched her as she went, feeling embarrassed and angry and sad and disgusted all at once. He wanted her to like him, had felt so good when she was paying attention to him, and now it was all ruined. 

“Well isn’t she _lovely_?” Daisy finally said through her gritted teeth. “New girlfriend?”

Fletcher ignored her, “I’m sorry I knocked you down. Are you okay?” He reached out to take a look at her hand but Daisy yanked it away and stood up, shaking her dress out as she stood.

“I’m fine, dough boy, just give me some space.”

Fletcher took a giant step back, feeling relieved to escape this encounter without milk in his hair or ink on his neck. He was still holding the bouquet of dandelions, and without thinking he thrust them into Daisy’s face.

“Here.”

Daisy, who couldn’t even see them, they were so close to her eyes, grabbed them and pulled them away to a more visible distance. She looked at the dandelions for a long second, made a weird face, and then threw them down.

“I don’t want your stupid flowers,” she muttered. “Now can you leave me alone?”

Fletcher shrugged. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Get OUT of here,” Daisy bellowed.

He obliged her.

***  

“She picked them up after you left, you know,” Hope’s voice at his shoulder seemed to come out of nowhere, shocking him into dropping his knife. He was helping his mother by skinning squirrels in the backyard, a task Hope refused to do. It was easy to stop paying attention to much of anything and get lost in the work, but it meant that Hope could easily sneak up on him. She could sneak up on pretty much anyone, even their mother, but it was still kind of annoying. 

“What?” In addition to being kind of embarrased at being suprised, Fletcher had no idea what his sister was talking about.

Hope sighed, as though he was really stupid. She did that a lot, acted like she was smarter than he was, and he wished she wouldn’t. She hadn’t always been like this, so certain that she was better than him. Actually, she’d only been like this for a little while.

Since Haymitch…

Hope suddenly seemed a lot less annoying.

“That girl with the gap in her teeth. She picked up all the flowers you gave her as soon as you were gone. I could see from the bakery window.”

Fletcher dropped the squirrel as well.

Hope turned up her nose and continued, “Maude was really mean to Lindy after she blew up at you. I was trying to be her friend, but I don’t trust her now.”

She was still really pretty, and thinking about her still made his heart jump, even knowing how rotten she could be. He wanted to defend her, even though he had seen firsthand that Maude was not a very nice person. It was extremely confusing.

“Look, Fletcher," Hope began, sounding a lot less full of herself and a lot more concerned than usual. "There are a lot of girls in the world. And we're complicated people. Sometimes we’re confusing.”

“ _Really_?” he burst out in a rare moment of sarcasm, knowing full well that girls made absolutely no sense.

Hope rolled her eyes.

“I'm pretty certain girls aren't the only confusing people on earth. But since we seem to be particularly confusing to _you_ I’m just saying, sometimes the good ones aren’t only the ones who seem perfect at first glance. Sometimes you've gotta dig a little deeper.”

He looked up at her, waiting for her to finish.

His sister shook her head, chuckling and sounding frustrated all at the same time.

“Guess you’re gonna need a few more years to figure that one out.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I completely lost track of what prompt was from whom, but this one is dedicated to nonemoreblack for her birthday. :)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is created out of prompts given to me by readers. It is more of a collection of one shots than a very coherent story.
> 
> Thank you so much for caring enough about my interpretation of this character to send me the prompts in the first place, and even more thanks for reading.


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